G-OGRAPHY: a southeast asian lady travels...

That's her...Former President Corazon Aquino the way I remember her back in 1986. In her signature symbolic yellow outfit, thick glasses, a no non-sense bob cut and that hand flashing her signature L for Laban...which meant Fight!

During a tumultuous time in Philippine history she inspired a nation to fight back against tyranny. She was a widow, a mother and a housewife, yet, by some unstoppable force Cory became the defender of democracy. She united Filipinos and led the historic People Power movement.

I was eight back then but I knew the importance of this woman's work. Growing up she continued to inspire me...to always fight for what is right. We fondly called her Tita (Aunt) Cory because she was a mother figure to us young Filipinos. Looking back if I had been in her shoes I would not have known what to do. Imagine she led a revolution, ousted a dictator, re-established democracy and fought off 7 coup attempts during her tenure as First Philippine Female President!

To say that Corazon Aquino was a strong woman is an understatement. Her faith and belief in what is good propelled her to constantly fight for our nation's freedom. For that I am in gratitude for I still reap the benefits of her legacy. May her soul rest in peace.

Tita Cory...para sa iyo ito. Salamat!



She was Time's Woman of the Year 1986 by the way...



Related articles:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1914125,00.html


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963185,00.html


http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/aquino1.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-aquino1-2009aug01,0,4766988.story

LA Times writes: "It’s official: Robert Downey Jr. is still the king of Comic-Con. The actor bounded into the San Diego Convention Center's Hall H on Friday morning, his second trip to massive weekend fest. This time, he was here to promote “Sherlock Holmes” and was welcomed with an even more breathless and deafening response than “Twilight’s” own Robert Pattinson. “I love you guys so much,” he told the raucous crowd. "

It was Saturday afternoon and my friend and I were riding down in an elevator from a roof top Comic-Con party. The elevator stops at some floor...the door opens and lo and behold its ROBERT DOWNEY JR. Iron Man...now Sherlock Holmes the King of Comic-Con. You hear a gasp of air from everyone as we look at him trying to contemplate if there was enough space for him in the elevator. Someone says: "It's ok, we can make room for you Sir" and just like that a big space in the middle of the elevator appeared. THE Downey stepped inside with a companion. Some dude was brave enough to mumble some starstruck compliment about how he loved Downey's work as an actor blah blah blah. And THE Downey just smiled because he was cool and he was IRON MAN!!!

It took super strength for me to not say or do anything stupid. I was looking calm and collected but inside my head I was screaming: "Oh my Lord it's Robert Downey Jr. The guy I've had a crush with since god knows when. Is it really him standing before me? It is! Oh sh*t. No way! Should I take a picture? Should I?". Well, I didn't! Biggest mistake ever. I was too paralyzed to act quickly. Instead I take this lousy picture of a piece of the back of his head as he was leaving the hotel.

Kids when you see someone famous that you really like just ask them politely if you can take your picture with them! I can kick myself in the head now...



Close-up

What’d You Say?



Many of our conflicts come from miscommunication.

Today, don’t let things pass. If something doesn’t feel right, then bring it up. But don’t do it with the intention of proving the other person wrong. Do it with the intention of removing the space, and getting closer to the person.

-Y Berg

Lately, I noticed a few interesting articles featuring turf wars and tweeting food trucks/stands. I wrote a post about Kogi the Tweeting Korean BBQ Truck not so long ago and I am amazed at how much it has caught on. But what really caught my fascination are the articles NYTimes published on Turf Wars for food trucks/carts (and apparently fruit stands?!). Hmmmmmm...maybe it's just me but it sounds sinister yet humorous at the same time. Like the story wants to be the next Judd Apatow film (VendorMan or Food Fight).

Tweetable Eats: What Street Vendors Can Teach Businesses About Twitter

The Truck Stops Here

Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart

Escalating Fruit Wars

Discovered this trailer while I was searching for movies to watch on Netflix. I'm deliberating on whether to watch it because I am really not a big fan of gore. Although I love anything Japanese or Martial Arts.

The movie is about a Japanese school girl avenging her brother's death. She lost an arm to a yakuza ninja family- the very clan that killed her brother. She survives their attack after which a bunch of mechanics help her get revenge by making her a prosthetic machine gun. Wow...I am not surprised that people can can come up with this nowadays but does this really happen in real life? I wonder if there is some parellel universe where this situation exists...

Speaking of princesses my friend recently launched a site called Everyday Fairytales. In her own words: "it's a shop for dreamers! Here you will find all sorts of creations that stem from my fairy tale imagination and embodies happiness, joy, wishes, and dreams come true." Everything is handmade which I think makes it even more special. I just got these two items and I cannot wait to receive them. I suggest that you guys take the time to check it out and get some micro-transactions going. Why? Because 90% of US firms are microbusinesses and helping them out will in turn stimulate the economy. Do you know that an estimated 72,361 new jobs per month back in 2005 were created by microbusinesses? This is why we must try to do our part in nurturing them.





Now that we are on the subject of supporting microbusinesses here is another one worth buying from Pretty Pixels. I got a few of her note cards and I am thinking of getting these buttons which bring out the inner geek in me:

A friend sent me this link the other day: There Is No Happily Ever After In Fallen Princesses and I found myself thinking about how true these juxtapositions were. The picture above is part of a series by photographer Dina Goldstein which was inspired by her observation of three-year-old girls, who were developing an interest in Disney's Fairy tales. She explains that:

"As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm's stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues."

That being said I hardly think that the Disney Princesses could solely be blamed for women's skewed perception of romance, beauty and self-worth. In fact, there is also another side of the spectrum - the female with the "Princess Complex" which one blogger describes as "an attitude fed to females that bestows upon them illusions of superiority and selfishness". Having grown up abroad as well (and in a third world country nonetheless) I couldn't help but observe how there seems to be a pervading culture that encourages a "princess complex" among girls in America. I mean do you ever stop to wonder why we see endless merchandise with princess emblems like tiara's or, my favorite, "I'm a princess" logo in almost every mass retail store? Or how only in America will you hear parents refer to their daughters as "my little princess" and then proceed to bow to their every whim. Flash forward to when they turn 16 where they grow up to be horrible brats that have a false sense of entitlement and gross disrespect for their parents or the people around them. See video below....



So in retrospect a tale or two could never be sufficient enough to turn women into either twisted insecure shells of themselves or tyrannical snot-face brats. The reasons are way bigger than that! It would take a psycho-socio-economic analysis that would be way over my head at this time of the night =)

Crappiest airline ever
Originally uploaded by grache23
Sneaking in a rant about the crappiest airline ever, Go!Airlines, so I can stop thinking about them. I recently took a trip to Kauai, HI (blog post coming up soon) and it would have been perfect except for the Go! experience. Go! Airlines is a small carrier in Hawaii used for inter-island flights. We got them as part of the air package that Expedia (which also sucks by the way) booked for us (those tickets didn't come cheap!). The fact that they had to charge us extra money to deliver paper vouchers to us for that part of the trip should have been an indication of this flight fiasco. I have been traveling for years and have used loads of smaller carriers but have never experienced such inefficient and crappy service such as this.

Because of Go! Airlines we missed our flight to LAX from Honolulu. This is despite the fact that we checked in almost 5 hours before our connecting flight and despite repeated inquiries to the Go! staff at the gate counter about time of departure. They did not even make an effort to announce that our flight will be delayed we just knew to be proactive because other flights before us were getting delayed. So of course we missed our flight since we got to Honolulu with only less than 10 minutes to take the slowest shuttle in the world to our next terminal.

I was so livid when I found out that it was the last flight back to LA. Thank god United Airlines had excellent customer service and was able to rebook us a flight back the next day. The only problem was we had to find a place to sleep. When we asked to talk to the supervisor to see if they can book us a hotel it took forever to get to talk to him. He was nice enough to call up the manager to get approval but that conversation lasted less than 5 minutes because the manager immediately said no. There were other passengers stranded and so we waited to see if any of them got any service. NADA. We were left to our own devices.

So of course, the horrible experience did not stop that night. The next day after a long flight back we find out that Go! did not hand off our luggage to United. $&@#(##!!! Right? Again United had great customer support and handled everything after we filed a report.

I am writing this post because when I tried to call customer care to see if I can give them a piece of my mind their recording pointed back to the Go! website and then the line immediately went dead. WOW! I wanted to sucker punch something right then and there. It's like someone intentionally putting down the phone on you. It was that annoying and THAT frustrating. Obviously, they did not want to be bothered by the multiple complaints about how crappy they are.

So moral of the lesson: never fly GO! Oh, and online travel sites don't always know best so the least you can do is do a quick research on smaller airlines you haven't heard about before pressing that Submit button.